Piñon Pipeline Endangers Chaco’s Ancient Heritage

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is considering allowing a private company to build a 130 mile pipeline and greatly increase drilling near Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Chaco is a World Heritage Site known for magnificent architecture built 1000 years ago by the ancestors of today’s Pueblo Indians. There is concern among archaeologists that damage could occur to the wider cultural landscape around the canyon, erasing part of the legacy of these fascinating ancient people. Mike Eisenfeld of San Juan Citizens Alliance takes us on a tour of the exploratory drilling already underway.

Protect the Chaco area from the Piñon Pipeline!

A new oil pipeline that would quadruple oil production in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin threatens the internationally recognized Chaco Cultural area and the Lybrook Badlands wilderness.

From The Sierra Club

Denver-based SaddleButte LLC has applied to the Bureau of Land Management for a permit to build the 130-mile Piñon Oil Pipeline that would cut between Chaco National Historical Park and outlier Pueblo Pintado from Lybrook down to I-40.

The pipeline would permanently cut through federal, state, Navajo, and private lands, opening the floodgates to thousands of new oil wells, millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater, damaged archeological sites, diminished recreation economy, dangerous accidents and further climate disruption.

The BLM has agreed to hold additional public meetings and extend public comment on the proposed Piñon Pipeline.

Make your voice heard by using this form to ask the BLM Farmington Office to reject the Piñon Pipeline permit. Please edit the subject line of the sample note and, if you can, edit the note with your own first sentence — personalized messages are often taken more seriously.

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EF! Note: We have little faith in online petitions and public appeal processes. Direct action gets the goods!

At Risk: Chaco Canyon

Ban Fracking on Federal Lands!

From Energy Reality:

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

•    Click here to learn more about fracking.
•    Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
•    Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
•    Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

Also see:

Is Nothing Sacred? Fracking and Chaco Culture National Historic Park

BLM narrows proposed Chaco drilling sites to four

 

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

BLM narrows proposed Chaco drilling sites to four

This photo shows Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico, about a 2½-hour drive south of Durango. Just four of 38 parcels requested for leasing by gas and oil companies in the area have been approved. The nearest lease site is about 10 miles from Chaco Canyon, the center of the ancestral Pueblo culture that flourished from the 800s to the 1100s.

Energy companies had nominated 38 parcels for leases

By Chuck Slothower, The Durango Herald

Opponents of drilling near Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico have received a reprieve from proposals to drill on U.S. Bureau of Land Management parcels bordering the park, which is home to ancestral Puebloan ruins.

The BLM this week released an environmental assessment that proposes to lease four of 38 parcels that were nominated by gas and oil companies.

None of the parcels recommended by the BLM’s preferred alternative to go forward is among the nominated parcels closest to the park. One nominated parcel was less than a quarter-mile from the park boundary.

The closest of the four parcels in the preferred alternative is about 10 miles from the park, and all four parcels are in an area that already is home to gas and oil activity.

Chaco Canyon is about a 2½-hour drive south of Durango.

A coalition of environmental groups wants the parcels nearest to Chaco Canyon permanently protected. Some of the parcels have been nominated repeatedly for leasing to gas and oil companies and deferred by the BLM.

Is Nothing Sacred? Fracking and Chaco Culture National Historic Park

Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Culture National Historic Park. | Photo: gregorywass/Flickr/Creative Commons License

By Char Miller, KCET

The falcon flew low and fast over Strawberry Rock, an outcropping high above the Rio Brazos Valley, just east of Chama, New Mexico.

We were sharing a picnic with good friends in a pine copse rooted in rough sandstone and marveling over the clear blue horizon, when the small raptor shot past; its backswept wings and breakneck speed were its only identifiable features.

As it stretched out and banked west, the falcon’s swift form was highlighted against the quartzite face of the Brazos Cliffs, glowing in the midday sun; it then hurtled down the dark green valley, following the silvery flow west toward the Rio Chama.

That shutter-click of a moment seemed suspended in time. Like our vacation, a lifting up and out, a release.

Yet at some point the falcon had to wing home, and so did we, though our pace was a bit more sedate. A day later we were rolling along U.S. 64 across northwestern New Mexico, straight through the state’s oil-and-gas patch in the San Juan River watershed.

The region contains the nation’s second largest gas reserves, a play that has gone through a series of booms and busts since the 1920s, but it has been experiencing a decline of late. The small towns along our route bear the marks of this economic withering — idled rigs, banged up pickups, pitted roadbeds, and dusty stores with little on the shelves. Even the relatively bustling Farmington, which received a substantial infusion of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act dollars to repave an extensive portion of U.S. 64, has not been able to generate enough new work to break out of its doldrums.

That’s why so many are looking for salvation in two words: Mancos Shale. The formation, which extends from New Mexico into portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, is buried about a mile beneath the surface. Estimated to contain upwards of six billion barrels of oil, approximately one-third of which lies within New Mexico, the untapped resource is being touted as a godsend for the recession-hit area.

Click here to read the full article…